Our second and last stop in Malaysia, Georgetown, a bustling, colourful and largely Chinese city, full of tumbledown shop houses, impressive colonial architecture and countless trishaws ferrying tourists and locals alike around the maze of broad streets and narrow lanes – listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 7th July 2008.

A plethora of old-fashioned little shops sprinkled across the city make Georgetown a fascinating place to wander. Little India, China Town, the night market and numerous temples consumed most of our time. Cafe culture is at its best here, we’ve spent our evenings drinking local beer and chatting to all in sundry – even I ran our of steam!

We are roughly a week behind schedule so we’ve decided to cut our stay here short where it’s really expensive and head to Indonesia where it’s much cheaper. We hope to be in Bali for Christmas and New Year if anybody gets a sudden urge for white sand and 30+ degree heat. We fly to Darwin on on 8th January, from there we’ll see where the road takes us in our campervan .

If you are ever wonder when and where we get time to write these posts, have a look at the last pic which Sam took yesterday as I was writing – a great posture and environment for creative thinking wouldn’t you say!

Our first port of entry into Malaysia and where better to start but Langkawi it’s best known holiday destination. It’s one of those places whose name alone summons up images of tropical romance and carefree days under swaying coconut palms.

After an enjoyable 2.5hrs boat ride from Ko Lanta, we arrived and were slightly taken aback by its development compared to most islands we visited in SE Asia; Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC and many more brands made us salivate as we searched for a taxi – thankfully we resisted.

As we were heading straight for the backpacker area we didn’t feel the need to secure accommodation in advance! How wrong were we! After a long search, which annoyed the taxi driver somewhat, we found a dorm (last pic). Most places tell us it’s ‘peak season´ in an effort to justify the price, but this place is really really busy. Malaysia has a population of 27 million and most of its affluent residents holiday here a least a couple of weeks a year.

Ten minutes to change and off to the beach – wow incredible – the sand’s like flour literally. We spent the evening chilling on the beach with friends (Tony and Sally) while watching the beautiful sunset.

On day 2 we went on a few excursions to 3 of its 99 islands, watched eagle feeding, snorkeled, swam in a fresh water lake, feed the monkeys cheerios (5th Pic) and then soaked up the sun on a private beach which was rather quite and beautiful. Hopefully you’ll have noticed our ever darkening tans – bring it on!

Everything here is really really expensive, easily double what we’ve paid on other beach resorts, so we are thinking it’ll be a rather short visit en route to Indonesia.

About Us

We created this blog so our family and friends can follow our life here in Dublin, Ireland. Sam is originally from the UK where we both lived together for many years. In 2008 we took a career break and completed a round the world trip across Africa, Asia, Australasia and South America. Following our travels we moved to Ireland.

We are expecting twins in November 2011 so our life and blog will take off on a different course. We would very much like you to follow us on that journey.